008: Upgrading Your Creativity with Esteban Gast

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And we are here now. Esteban, thanks so much for appearing at the How to be Awesome at Your Job Podcast.

Esteban Gast
Oh my gosh. Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. I’m sure you’ve got a lot of fun nuggets, and please don’t hold back with the comedy. Feel free to harass me here and there as things unfold. Nothing is off limits. Well, if it is, we’ll edit it out, so it’s all good.

Esteban Gast
Yeah. The power of editing. They’re going to be like, “He was so nice to you,” and I’ll be like, “What? No!”

Pete Mockaitis
Like, “I think Pete is amazing.”

Esteban Gast
Yeah. Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
So yeah, some really cool credentials associated with creativity, co-authoring those two books and doing some teaching, instructing, educating the youth at the University of Illinois, I-L-L.

Esteban Gast
I-N-I

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. That’s how we do. And so that’s really fun. So beyond your professional credentials, can you tell us a little bit… What do you do for kicks and for fun beyond the day in day out?

Esteban Gast
Yes. Well, what’s been really exciting is that beyond the day in day out of these jobs that I’m super lucky to have and really enjoy is I perform. So I perform standup comedy, and that’s slowly become more and more of a real job, which is kind of insane, which is kind of something crazy that I’m still wrapping my head around. So right now, I’m currently in the middle of Pennsylvania, comedy capital of the world, obviously. Where do you go when you want to make it? Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. That’s where I am. It’s actually a real–

Pete Mockaitis
Phoenixville?

Esteban Gast
Phoenixville. Absolutely. I don’t know which came first, if Phoenix was like, “You know what? Let’s cut off the Ville. Let’s keep it easy,” or if they shortened out to Phoenix. Well, I’m here performing on a three-week tour, which is great.  And what’s been really exciting is to see that blossom into an actual revenue stream, something that can actually start paying some sort of bills. They’re small bills, but some of the bills are like a small Comcast bill or something like that. It can start paying some of those, which is exciting.

Pete Mockaitis
A Comcast bill is too high, so that’s kind of substantial. So it sounds like you’re pursuing a number of creative endeavors all at once. That’s cool. So you teach about creativity, I guess not so much so from a theoretical point of view, from a practical lived point of view where–

Esteban Gast
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re bringing home some of the bacon via comedy and creative stuff, so that kind of gets me curious about that. The first thing I want to ask you is that I think when it comes to creativity, folks get a little bit sort of nervous. They’re like, “We need ideas from you. And they need to be good. And there need to be lots of them. And they need to be now.” There’s a little bit kind of a performance element or anxiety dimension to that. Is that something that you teach about? Or how do you handle that individually?

Esteban Gast
Yes. Absolutely. Great question. So at the beginning of the course, honestly, the biggest thing that we face as instructors of creativity, and it’s becoming this more and more academic discipline. There’s creativity studies now at different universities, and it’s good. It’s catching up to what the business world wants. In recent surveys, maybe it’s kind of unanimous that all these CEOs and managers, they look for creativity and they say that’s one of the highest skills, often on top of the list, the number one skill that they look for.

So people realize that it’s important and then they come in and they take their class and everyone is nervous. I mean truly, maybe there’s a few kids who are in advertising or think, “Oh, I’m creative,” but they still are like, “Oh, no. Am I actually creative?” It’s this very visceral reaction that unfortunately there’s this narrative that you’re either creative or you’re not. So what we point out, and this is kind of the first few weeks, is we show the creativity research. Now, research shows that creativity is a skill that can be enhanced. So you can actually become more creative. So it’s a malleable skill. I mean it’s like throwing a football or learning the piano. Some people maybe are innately better at it. Some pick it up faster, and that could be even your upbringing, right? So your parents had you make up stories when you were younger, so you understand that you can come up with stories or scripts or something like that. But no matter what, everyone can get better at it. So what we do is we break it down. I teach in the college of engineering, which is a great place for a creativity course.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Esteban Gast
So in the college of engineering, we have to give engineers… They like systems. They like facts. They don’t like things like, “Creativity is inside your heart.” That is not something one can say to an engineer.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s not inside my heart?

Esteban Gast
I hate to tell it to you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh.

Esteban Gast
So what we do is we develop these frameworks. So we say, “Absolutely. If someone wants an idea, if you follow these steps, these different frameworks, from brainstorming these different models, you’re going to come up with a better idea.” So if you understand the neuroscience of creativity and how, for example, if I say, “Hey, Pete. Let’s design a new car,” you immediately think… You probably think of your car or like a generic car commercial, something like that, where we kind of stop and we say, “All right. Well, the neuroscience behind it is you need to go a different way.” It’s called a provocation, something that in your brain says, “You know what about car that is designed by nature,” and all of a sudden, you’re looking–

Pete Mockaitis
I’m provoked.

Esteban Gast
Yes. You are provoked and you are ready to design a car that uses principles from trees. Or I think something interesting, and this actually came up in class, is students were only thinking of cars that were hybrids or electric, and then all of a sudden, one student using a provocation said, “What if a car was not only bad for the environment but was good for the environment? What if it ran on carbon emissions or stuff in greenhouse gases and turned them into clean stuff?” And of course, the feasibility of that is silly. But that thought was a very creative thought, kind of stepping back and using these frameworks and saying, “What’s an unrelated idea that you can push into it?” come up. Often, quantity leads to quality, so we say if you look at a list, research again, if you and I are coming up with 10 car ideas, our first three ideas are going to be super similar, but if we came up with like 100, I think those last 10 are going to be pretty random. So just because we’ve kind of gone through the filter of what we know of what is common, so we’re like, “Oh, a car. What if it was a hybrid? What if it was self-driving?” and we kind of go through these ideas that we know and then we start getting into the deep parts of our brain which are scary but we’ve got to go there. So creativity can be broken down in a way that isn’t, “Hey, just come up with inspiration. Go be creative now.” If someone says that to you, first off, they don’t really understand creativity, but secondly, you can definitely stop, breathe, and kind of use these mental models or these frameworks, and kind of think through your understanding of how creativity actually works and develop systems around that, and you can come up with better ideas, with objectively better ideas. I don’t know if that answered your question completely, but I think we did come up with a few car ideas, which is good. So at the very least, we’re going to design our car.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. I can hear the voice-over actress and see the commercial right now. “What if a car were more than just a car?” All those commercials.

Esteban Gast
Oh my gosh. Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
So a force for good. So the performance is like, okay, you can take a breath. You can know that it is learnable, so it’s not justsomething that’s, “Uh-oh. I don’t know that, so I’m screwed.” So these frameworks then, that sounds juicy. Tell me, what are some of the most effective, efficient, high-yield leveraged optimal frameworks that really make the goods shine?

Esteban Gast
Yeah. Ooh, baby. All right. So I have bad news for you, Pete. They are not as sexy as you think. That is–

Pete Mockaitis
I want acronyms. I want diagrams.

Esteban Gast
Oh, we have both of those.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, good.

Esteban Gast
But for example, here is the first one that is very, very important and creativity research around the world points to. Are you ready? You’re going to be disappointed.

Pete Mockaitis
Suspense. Okay.

Esteban Gast
All right. It is time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Esteban Gast
That is it. Time. So thinking, it is the simplest thing. Thinking about something longer means more creative ideas. That is it. That is literally it. So time is one of the biggest principles. So yeah. So there’s this thing where even if you have one hour to think of something and someone has two hours… So what we do in terms of our students, because that’s kind of unfair to be like, “Just time,” and then dismiss class. That seems like really we’re not offering our students the best education. So what we do is we say, “Brainstorm. Your first 20 minutes are exciting. You’re excited about your ideas. The next 20 minutes, you hit a dip.” And this is what we’ve identified. For the next 20 minutes, people are grumpy. They don’t want to come up with ideas. They start kind of being silly and being like, “You know what? Whatever. What if we don’t design a car?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Esteban Gast
But they stick with it those last 20 minutes. So this is an hour. So first 20 minutes, exciting, fun. Second 20 minutes, a dip. Those last 20 minutes are really, really exciting, and that is where your ideas come together. And another thing in terms of time is there’s all this really fascinating creativity research about what they call the creative pause. So we think about it like, “Where do you come up with your best ideas?” A lot of people say the shower or going for a walk, and that’s when your subconscious… when you allow your subconscious and you give it time to kind of create these links in your brain between all the things you’re talking about.

So often, what I do, even in, let’s say, writing a joke or thinking of a movie is I have this idea, and first off, I try to push past it. So I’m excited, and then there’s probably a dip, and then I continue thinking about it. I kind of push past that dip, that natural inclination to say, “All right. I’m done,” knowing that a lot of good ideas are after this dip, and then I’ll go not think about it, go for a walk, or just work on other things, and then come back and really trust that taking some time away, my subconscious has linked up and connected some really exciting thoughts. So it’s another thing is that your subconscious is smart. Literally trusting that and knowing that you can think about something and knowing to step away could be one of the best things for creativity. To step away and then come back to it and really push past maybe what you think is natural.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really a pretty great tip that didn’t even occur to me, and I love it. So when? That could be game-changing for many folks right there is because that is like you hit the dip and it’s like, “I guess I’m done now.” You think that’s it. You think that’s all you’ve got.

Esteban Gast
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
But then there’s more inside. It’s kind of inspiring. I’m almost seeing a Rocky montage sort of a thing right now, as folks are like, “Oh, they’re tired. They’re exhausted. They’ve got no more ideas.” And yet in the depths, you pull it out. It’s pretty cool.

Esteban Gast
That is it. Yeah. And the montage is just them sitting in front of like a screen for 20 minutes.

Pete Mockaitis
But if you had a percussion musical score–

Esteban Gast
Good point. And that’s why I mean it’s interesting and it is comforting in those moments to say like, “Wait a minute. Research is behind this.”  So sometimes they’re disappointed when I don’t say, “Oh. Click your heels three times and say, ‘Create!’” Instead, I say, “Hey, trust that you’re doing the process. Stick with it. Stick with it longer than you want, longer than you feel like you need to. Also, take breaks and come back to it, trusting that even allowing that time, either intensive time, focusing time, or subconscious gathering time, doing things that you enjoy, or these creative pauses like showers and walks, or these things.” And people usually walk away disappointed, just yelling things about me and my family, which–

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so traumatic.

Esteban Gast
It is. It is, Pete. I almost… “You son of a gun. Time? That’s your piece? You get paid to tell people to think about time?”

Pete Mockaitis
But I buy it. I think most things in life, it seems like there are no shortcuts or easy answers. “Pete, how did you lose 20 pounds?” “You know what? I ate less food. I exercised more.” “Oh. I was hoping for a cool trick.”

Esteban Gast
“That’s it? Like there’s no secret sauce?” It’s like, “I guess no.”

Pete Mockaitis
I’m fascinated by this. So more time. That’s good. So that kind of gets things flowing. Maybe before I step ahead, are there any other key principles?

Esteban Gast
So we actually lay out all of these kind of mental modelsand frameworks in this book. It’s super fun. It’s super visual. I mean it’s written by a team of three or four creativity instructors, the team I work with, so I would hope it is fairly creative and entertaining and engaging. I would say our reputation depends on it.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ll put a link to that in the show notes here at awesomeatyourjob.com.

Esteban Gast
Beautiful.

Pete Mockaitis
We’ll get those in. And what are some of the gems, the high value nuggets in there?

Esteban Gast
Yeah. Absolutely. So the title of the book is called “Building Your Creativity,” and the subtitle is “Tools for Having Ideas and Bringing Them to be.”And we try to give as many tangible tools as possible. So we’re dealing with engineers. They love systems. They love these frameworks. So what we lay out when you’re brainstorming is strategies like Lotus Blossom, which is take a problem and separate it into these smaller areas, and you brainstorm around the smaller areas. We talk a lot about, actually even before you get to a problem, identifying the root of the problem. So we have this thing called problem tree where you kind of attach causes and the effects and then these different maps of what people say, what people think, what people say and what they actually think and what they actually do, and all these different empathy challenges. So you kind of have these different personas and you design something. But for the listener who, honestly, I’m going to say the majority of you are going to buy this book, so I won’t go into it.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure.

Esteban Gast
So something that I’d tell people also, so I guess another creativity gem or that type of thing, is I think reflect on your own life and where you are creative or where these really good ideas come from. So even we talked about the creative pause. A lot of people say their best ideas come in the shower or when they run for a walk or even they’re driving for a long period of time. So identifying that and then building in more space for that. I think it’s valuable to get in a really good state before you start brainstorming. So I think it’s better.

Pete Mockaitis
How do I get there?.

Esteban Gast
Yeah. I mean everyone does it differently, but I kind of do that, especially if I’m writing comedy. I think I want to write comedy from joy or from kind of this view of like, “Oh, the world is silly.” I mean there’s some comics who write from pain. But that’s, I guess, not necessarily my style. Yeah. So I think about that and I go, “Okay, well, how can…” I mean truly, these are serious questions, especially if this becomes more of a career and it’s like, “How can I, before I start writing jokes or a script, get myself in as silly a mood as possible?”

So I do characters, and this is me in my room before I write down or before I start writing a script. Yeah. So I do characters and I play silly music and I kind of get myself active. There’s a really big link between moving your body and creativity. Even if you’re sitting and coming up with ideas, even if you stretch before a walk is really good. Different things like that. So I get my body moving. If I’m writing comedy, I mean truly, I move it in silly ways. So I’m jumping up and down and not kind of yoga-focused and be like, “I will now write jokes.” I’m jumping up and down, kind of being silly. It’s funny that it’s easy, I think, in our lives to say, “Oh, yeah. I have the good ideas there, but that’s kind of a coincidence,” or “I’m not going to take that too seriously.” And I think it really makes a difference when you say, “Wait a minute. Writing comedy, I write better late at night than in the morning. I don’t have to force myself to write at 9:00 a.m. I write better when I’m kind of silly,” or “I write better when I feel rested and when I don’t feel pressure.” A lot of times, I apply… And we’ll talk, I’m sure, a little bit about productivity. I think I am super deadline-oriented. I set deadlines for everything. So I guess there is this interesting juxtaposition because I write when I’m not stressed. But also, sometimes when I need to write, I sit down and I go, “I’m not going to leave this chair until I finish writing this.” And often, that means I’m very hungry when I leave that chair or very tired, but–

Pete Mockaitis
Or you’ve got to go to the bathroom.

Esteban Gast
Or the bathroom. I know. Well, I can’t, Pete. That is kind of maybe the biggest creativity hack is just kind of hold it. Don’t go to the bathroom. Yeah. So I think recognizing, truly saying, “Is this a moment where I’m going to work well under pressure?” Yeah. So I think a lot of self-reflection. That’s another thing that engineers are… We’re kind of talking to them a little bit more about self-reflection. And actually, one of the biggest assignments in our class is journaling, so we have everyone there required to, which is crazy for a popular class aimed at engineers. And it’s open to everyone, but it’s aimed at engineers. They’re required to journal a few times a week, to kind of think about those questions and also to be getting the habit of writing down ideas. There’s this book called “Idea Machine,” and the premise of the book is if you write 10 ideas a day, you’re going to come up with better ideas and you’re going to look around you and see the whole world bursting with ideas. And it’s such a simple–

Pete Mockaitis
And these are ideas about anything?

Esteban Gast
Yes. Absolutely. So we just say, “Write 10 ideas about anything every day.”And that’s the whole premise of this bestselling book, which again is interesting and is certainly true, but a lot of it is intuitive. A lot of it we can just think about, “How do I work my best? When am I at my most creative?” and kind of shape our… kind of build our life around that or build systems to reinforce that more.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot, talking about building these systems. And I recall inMihalyCziksentmihal’s book. I never know if I’m saying his name right.

Esteban Gast
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
He talks about creativity.

Esteban Gast
Flow.

Pete Mockaitis
He talks about… That’s his main one. He’s also got a book about creativity, and he talks about maintaining uncommitted attention for novelty, which I think is a great term of phrase.

Esteban Gast
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And then protecting that. And he uses examples of Einstein wearing the same thing every day deliberately, so that he had a couple more minutes to do some good thinking, some good creativity, and he wasn’t kind of bogged down with handling stuff. So protecting some of that time.

Esteban Gast
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
So that’s cool. In practice then, what are some other things we can do to keep the juices flowing and to keep it protected?

Esteban Gast
Yeah. Absolutely. And I think, again unfortunately, the answer is different for many people, but I think I have seen and believe in, and it works in my life, a lot of research on music in the background. And some of this isn’t for everyone. Also, I think recognizing that maybe this is the bigger message. So recognizing that creativity is this free-flowing beautiful thing that you can kind of tap into, but at the same time, it’s built around habits. So it’s built around things that you just need to trust that you need to do every time. So yes, it is fun and silly that before I sit down to write a script, I have these funny series of events, but I need to do that every time, even when I don’t feel like it, even when I go, “You know what? I’m just going to sit down and write this script.” So I think realizing that creativity is a habit or making it a habit. So creativity is this fascinating juxtaposition of kind of like it’s a habit, you have to show up every day, like get your butt in a chair every day no matter what, likeyou know that going for a walk before you go into work makes you better at work, go for that walk. But it’s also this habit that is also this sort of time that’s kind of free-flowing and kind of loose and spills over. Yeah. So I think maybe that, maybe for people trying to build more creativity in their life is taking this two-sided approach of saying, “All right. Well, this is a habit.” It is important to wake up and take a few deep breaths. Or it is important, let’s say, to wake up five minutes early and journal. That’s one of the best things you can do. There’s a lot of research on kind of morning pages.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I have heard of those.

Esteban Gast
Yes. Absolutely. So that’s an incredible way to start the day. It’s an incredible way to get your brain going in the morning. And those can be very freeing, right? Those are free-flowing and you wake up, you write about what you want. You can sit there a little bit longer if you want, like it’s this beautiful free time, but at the same time, the foundation of that is a habit where you wake up every single day, because morning pages work, and they work best if it’s every single day. So it’s this interesting thing where you’re like, “Oh, this is my creativity habit. I just wake up and I do this, and I tap into who I am,” and then the other side is like, “But I have to do it every single day,” or whatever, five days a week. So it’s this interesting thing where I see myself constantly battling between building in spaces in my life that are loose and I could do what I want. It’s a whiteboard and me, and that’s it. But then having those habits where I go to a whiteboard every single day at a certain time or give myself half an hour at the end of the day to just write down joke ideas.

Or every time I… Something I do is when I wake up, I do certain things. There’s a great website. Actually, we’re talking about morning pages. There’s a great website called 750words.com. You get an email every morning and it says, “Hey, write 750words.com.”At the beginning, you’re excited, and then you hit this dip. And then at the end of the 750 words, that number is very intentional. You kind of get back into like, “Oh my gosh. Wait a minute. This makes sense. There’s some connections happening in my brain,” which is exciting.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s interesting. So you’re saying 750 words is an intentional number that pushes you past the dip, similar to an hour-ish. I don’t know if it’s exactly an hour or 48 minutes or whatnot, but 750-ish words or one hour-ish of time thinking about stuff is sufficient to push past the yucky dip time?

Esteban Gast
Yes. Absolutely. So the 750 words, and often that doesn’t take a full hour. I mean I suppose it depends, but yeah, I would say that is an intentional period of time, almost broken down the way that we broke that hour that maybe your first 200 or 250 words you’re excited. You’re actually doing this. You’re actually doing something for your creativity. The next 250 words, you hate it. You wish you never listened to this podcast. Why did someone give you this idea? And those last 250 words, you go, “Oh, wait a minute. Something good is happening here. I allowed myself enough time in my subconscious, in my brain and enough time to really link stuff up.” So that’s set up in the same way that maybe the first 20 minutes you’re excited, the next 20 it’s kind of a dip, and the last 20 minutes… And this is also just… I’m not guaranteeing that 40 minutes on the dots you’re going to look at your watch–

Pete Mockaitis
No. You’re on the record. Don’t try to backpedal now.

Esteban Gast
And I’ve done 750 words and not have a breakthrough or something like that. And I’ve also started and been excited and had really creative ideas that later turned into literal businesses.

Pete Mockaitis
So literally it’s a business.

Esteban Gast
Literally, this is not only a business. It is a literal business.

Pete Mockaitis
In addition to pushing past the threshold, you’ve mentioned three specific tips or strategies or frameworks in terms of getting to the root cause, the lotus unpacking, and some empathy stuff. Can you maybe work me through that? Let’s say we’re tackling a problem or question and we want to think about why are my coworkers so unmotivated? Let’s say that’s our problem.

Esteban Gast
Yeah. Perfect. I love that.

Pete Mockaitis
If I’m going to go after that with your root cause toolkit, what am I going to do from there?

Esteban Gast
Yes. Absolutely. So I would say, first off, that’s a really, really great problem.

Pete Mockaitis
No. It’s terrible. It’s really unmotivating.

Esteban Gast
It’s a great problem to tackle. It’s a great problem. All of us should have unmotivated coworkers. It’s a great problem to tackle because, one, it’s something that means a lot to you, right? So that is an incredible question to ask because if you can kind of help shape that culture at work, you’re going to be awesome at your job. I mean that’s a great question. So here’s what we would do. So let’s do a problem tree. So we would sit there. So if you imagined a tree, there’s the trunk of the tree, and the branches we are going to put “What people do.” Let’s say the actions and what we see. So we see people coming in late and leaving early. We see people on Facebook. We see people not really asking good questions or caring about their projects. We see people maybe even exquisitely saying, “Oh, yeah, this is just a job. I don’t care. I’m just coming in, grabbing a paycheck.” Different things like that.

Pete Mockaitis
So these are the branches. I see them at the surface level. They’re just readily apparent.

Esteban Gast
Yes. Perfect. And then what we do is we try to come up with causes for each one, and then this can get real complicated. So people are checking Facebook. That means that they don’t want to do their work. I mean Facebook is more compelling and interesting, like maybe they miss their friends, maybe they’re checking the news. All these different things. So we try to start building these potential causes and we see which ones really come up, and we try to push past the first ones. That’s a big… kind of like we’ve talked about in time, pushing past the first one. So let me use this example in class real fast, and we can come back to your example, but we were talking about down in the University of Illinois, the objectively greatest university ever, ranked by a poll done by me to me at this moment.

There’s Green Street, and it’s this really popular street and people were saying, “Okay, Green Street has too much traffic. What do we do?” So they were saying what they saw. The effects are a lot of people go there for bars, and it’s all where the restaurants are, and it connects to these two sister cities, and everyone has to go down these different streets. And all of these different things. And the first solutions that they were creating were, “What if at Green Street there was a bike lane or it’s walkable?” or “What if…” All these different things, and what they found out doing this, writing out these different causes, is that Green Street is where all the restaurants are, and it is this connecting street. So then the solution that they came up with was to make other streets that are also connecting streets or other streets near it better.

So how to “fix” Green Street was to make other streets more attractive and more student-friendly and different things like that, which is totally different because the first thing when you tell a student, “Hey, what would you do to fix Green Street?” they go, “Oh, it’s all pedestrian,” or “Get rid of the chain restaurants like McDonald’s,” or all these different things. ”Less bars. Bars close an hour early. Green Street gets too crazy, and it’s unsafe,” all these different things. So they kind of have these root things. So we look at that, so we see people are unmotivated.

And this is a complex issue, but I mean truly, so let’s say if everyone is on their computer and everyone is on Facebook or something like that, what if people are alone in their desks and they want to feel just connected to something else? So it’s like, “What if there was a work social media where people, while they’re working, could post good articles that they’re reading?” So you’re getting these benefits of Facebook, but it is in this work setting or something like that. So if we identify that people are on Facebook way too much at work and we kind of try to dig into that and say, “Hey, why are you on Facebook?” and we go past the “I don’t know. Nothing better to do. I was watching that John Oliver video and I was checking in with Chuck who’s at the office,” and you’re like, “Wait a minute. You’re talking to our coworkers and you’re sharing ideas and concepts. What if we embrace that rather than try to stop that?” So I think this was maybe admittedly a big issue and one harder, but it’s valuable to write all the effects, what you see, what people think and they feel, and then to have the causes, so when you design a solution, you’re actually fixing the problem. So this happens all the time. People are unmotivated at work, and they give them more money, and they are still unmotivated.

Pete Mockaitis
I see.

Esteban Gast
So that is a lack of creativity and a lack of understanding. If someone goes, “You’re not doing your work. You are on Facebook all day,” you know what? I’m going to give you a little bit of a bonus. You’re going to work harder. They still feel alone in their desk. They want to reach out to people. They want to share ideas. They want to know what’s going on in the world. So they’re going to continue to go on Facebook no matter what, if that is the cause. So that’s kind of that. So we really break down those sort of things. And yeah, what we would have done here is probably break down each individual one. So that means in, let’s say, the trunk of the tree, it would be people on Facebook, and then the effects are they’re on Facebook at this time and here’s what they say, here’s what we see them do. So even when they were chatting with Chuck who’s in the office and they were checking the news and all these things, so then we say, “What are the causes?” The causes are what if even we put a TV with CNN on it. Or that would be a solution.

So the cause would be they want to keep up-to-date with current news, or March Madness is on and they want to watch the games, or all these different… They want to feel like they’re part of the outside world. They want to feel like they’re not missing something. They want to feel part of the community, right? So all of a sudden, instead of saying, “Get off Facebook. You’re going to get in trouble,” or “We’re going to block it. We’re going to block social media,” or “You’re going to get paid more,” we have an understanding of the actual root cause of the problem that they want to be part of the community. Great. We design something that is internal. They want to keep up-to-date with the world. Great. We’ll have all these different… CNN or whatever. And these are the first ideas, but yeah, that’s what we would do in terms of each individual thing. So really try to find the root cause of the problem. And again, so to do this well and better than anyone else, simply one of the biggest factors in that might just be time.

So what we’re doing is putting it in a neat little system where there is a trunk and there are branches and those are the effects, and then for every effect, you write a cause. And then almost always what happens is you see the causes pop up. They’re doing that for this reason, and that reason is repeated again, and you have a really clear understanding of why people do certain things or what is causing those certain things.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. And so you keep asking the questions, the extra whys, get to the root of things. And so what’s this lotus tool about?

Esteban Gast
Yes. So Lotus Blossom then is a brainstorming tool. Lotus Blossom is kind of, let’s say, a mind map. So what you do is you take certain aspects of it and then you brainstorm around it. So a lot of times, I say in creativity you want to come up with an idea that no one else has thought of before. So that means you either have to ask a question that no one else has thought of before or go to a place that no one has thought of before, or get so small and think deeply about something that people just take for granted.

So let’s say we are designing a new playground. There’s a lot of aspects to that, right? So we want to design a new playground. Here is what brand brainstorming would look like. Or if your boss says, “Hey, design a new playground,” and you just go, “All right. How about better swings?” So what you would do in Lotus Blossom is that you have each subset and what we try to do is eight ideas for each one. So let’s say playground. A subset would be… And you can do this in many different ways, but let’s say users. So we’re going to design it around users. So a playground has children. It’s got teachers. It’s got parents. It’s got council members. So we would try to get to eight that interact with the playground. So even city council members.

Let’s say at night, teenagers hang out on there because there’s nowhere else to go. So we would force ourselves to get to eight, and then we would start thinking, “So parents…” And we can start thinking about solutions now or even kind of dive deep into the problem. Let’s start thinking about solutions because that seems more fun. So parents, they’re there and they maybe would want Wi-Fi. So what if there was Wi-Fi at playgrounds. They want to make sure their kids are safe, so what if there was something… And we can get kind of crazy with this. A lot of times in brainstorming, you diverge, so you come up with as many ideas and solutions as possible. You diverge and then you converge, then you kind of start narrowing them down. So at this point, we’re not editing our ideas. So we’re coming up with eight ideas for parents and playgrounds. So there’s Wi-Fi. Maybe there’s people there whose main job it is to watch kids, make sure they are safe and don’t go into fights. Maybe there’s videocameras and then you have a playground app, so you’re talking with parents but your phone is up and you can see where your kid is because there’s kind of like security cameras. Maybe there’s a workout machine.

What’s a playground for adults? Or maybe adults can be in an elliptical while watching their kinds on the playground, and all these different things. So those are some cool ideas, and I think that literally came because we were focusing on one part of it. So when someone designs a playground, so then what we would do is we do that for every single person. So what does a city councilperson want? And even these users that we kind of had trouble coming up with, they want it to be safe, they want no weirdos, they want it to be clean, they want it to–

Pete Mockaitis
Taxes.

Esteban Gast
And taxes. Yeah. And how about promote themselves? Yeah, taxes. What if there was something to donate and say, “Keep playgrounds in this city everywhere.” So all of a sudden, we’re thinking about all these and then we combine ideas, and we can say, “Okay, well, what is something that we think parents would really, really enjoy? They would enjoy this. What is something that they would enjoy?” So we start mapping these things, and again, we see trends. So that’s a lot of these frameworks is we force our brains to think in a different way. And so we force our brains to come up with ideas and focus on the tiny things that we don’t focus on. So we focus on the tiny things. Hey, every time before you brainstorm, here are three things you should do. One, something physical. Two, something mental. And three, take two deep breaths. So you have the option to stretch or jump up and down or do jumping jacks. That’s physical. Second, mental. You are going to repeat an affirmation of “Creativity takes time. Creativity takes time,” or “Trust in the subconscious,” or “There’s going to be a dip. Be ready for the dip. Push past the dip. Push past those first few ideas.”

So that’s something. And then the third would be breath. So all of a sudden, we created this tool that I would say, “Students and listeners of this podcast,” every single time. What if you did those three things? I guarantee you that actually those are for a fact rooted in science, in creativity research, and that is a system that seems intuitive and it seems like, “Oh, you’re just telling me to stretch,” but if you did that every single time, you’re going to have better ideas. You’re going to feel better about things.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s fantastic. Thank you. And I love those precise actionable things that we can do. That’s good. We’re in our final moments here, which means we’re going to shift gears into fast faves. I’m going to ask you some real quick questions and your responses will be about a minute or less with regard to the answers. And we’ll sort of learn all kinds of wise things that you’ve discovered in your journeys of creativity and more.

Esteban Gast
Okay. Beautiful.

Pete Mockaitis
So first up, could you share with us a favorite quote? Something that inspires you again and again or just makes you laugh and see the wisdom of goodness.

Esteban Gast
Yes. I was thinking about this. I think a quote I’m thinking a lot about now is there’s two. One is I think Bob Goff said it. He’s this brilliant author. He wrote a great book called “Love Does,” and he said, “I’m not afraid of failure. I’m afraid of success at the wrong thing.”

Pete Mockaitis
Right on. And how about a favorite book?

Esteban Gast
One of the most powerful moments in teaching was I saw this student and he said, “Oh my gosh.” I was like, “How are you doing?” We were talking and he goes, “Your class changed my life,” and I was like, “Oh my gosh. Thank you. That’s great.” And I felt good. I pat myself on the back and said, “What was your favorite part of class?” and he goes, “Oh, you recommended this book, and that book changed my life.” And he said, “Honestly, I don’t remember much of the class,” which is a nice humbling moment. So then the book is “War of Art” by Steven Pressfield. And it said in creativity there’s two sides. There’s this loose side, this loosey-goosey “Let’s see what happens. Let’s allow ourselves to kind of play in this and spend time.” This book is very much on the belief that creativity is a habit and it is a kick in the butt. It says,“You should be creating these things and here’s how you do that. And don’t be scared. And I know you’re scared, but don’t be scared.” So it’s got great things like, “Use fear as a compass,” like if you’ve got an idea and you are scared to start it, that means that’s the idea that you should be doing. All these different things.

Pete Mockaitis
Great. And how about a favorite website?

Esteban Gast
Yeah. I really like brainpickings.org. It’s a beautiful kind of long form reflections on creativity, a lot of creative historical figures, a lot of great book reviews. I’ve been trying to fight back against clickbait and kind of these short form stories and listicles, and brainpickings.org kind of offers thatsort of long form, kind of almost journalism in terms of the creative space. Brainpickings.org.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And a favorite habit? A sort of game-changing personal practice that you employ?

Esteban Gast
Yeah. I think kind of breathe before making any decisions. I kind of talked about that and the importance of that. So I think before I… I mean yeah, anything, even say maybe in the heat of a conversation or if I’m feeling upset or all these different things. I think a big part of it is just taking a breath before you do something.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about any favorite tools? Any gadget, software, hardware that you use again and again?

Esteban Gast
Yeah. There’s a great app called Pocket, and you can save articles and read them later. And I travel a lot on airplanes and things like that, and I love to catch up on articles because sometimes my days are so busy that I don’t get to read too much. So Pocket is a great app. That is the app I probably use the most, actually.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you tell me about a favorite time-saving trick or tactic that you use to get so much done?

Esteban Gast
The trick is you start before you’re ready. I didn’t know anything about ecommerce. I just said, “Let me start.” It’s a super small scalable business. It cost me $100 to start, and all these different things. I just started before I was ready and learned while I was doing it. And I created the first one, had a good experience, made a little bit of money, and I created the second one. It went better. It was more successful, it made more money, and it was all just me starting. So I think that’s another thing, especially when it’s these kind of smaller stakes. How do I get so much done? I just do it and I know it’s not perfect, and I just kind of trust that things will figure themselves out, especially if it’s kind of a low risk venture like that.

Pete Mockaitis
And can you tell about a favorite truth bomb? Something that when you communicate, people really start taking notes or they retweet it or in the books it gets the Kindle highlights left and right?

Esteban Gast
Ooh, baby. Maybe I think there is… In my personal experience, I think there is a lot of value to silliness and play and kind of this light mood and way of operating. I think it’s easier to come up with ideas.I think being funny and kind of going through life, trying to poke fun at what’s happening. And then maybe that’s the secret. Maybe the productivity or any sort of moderate amount of achievement comes from being light, the lightness of being.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And so to wrap up, can you tell me what would be your favorite way to be found? Email? Twitter? Website? What should we do?

Esteban Gast
Yeah. You can go to my website, estebangast.com. I’m sure that’s linked below. And then there you can find all my social media and my email. Maybe check out a few of… I gave a TEDx talk which kind of tells a little bit about my life’s philosophy and kind of where I want to go in the next step of my career and all these different things. So yeah, I would say that’s just kind of my little online corner of the internet that kind of details who I am and kind of what I want to keep doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s great.

Esteban Gast
And I would love for anyone to reach out in anything, even more info on the book or on the class. We’re actually creating an online version of the course, and the first iteration of it was only for University of Illinois students, but then it will be open to everyone. So if you thought anything was useful in the near future, reach out and I’m sure I’ll do an email blast or something for that course. And it will be free and probably up in Coursera or something. University of Illinois has a contract with Coursera, but it will be this opportunity to maybe really think about creativity in a different way.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite challenge or a final call to action? Like if there’s one specific action that you think folks listening could benefit most from tackling, what would it be?

Esteban Gast
Start developing that habit of waking up and writing down. You wake up and you create something. You wake up and you have this act of creation, this act ofcreativity. I think that can make really big differences in your day.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you so much, Esteban. It’s been a lot of fun, and these are some beautiful creativity nuggets. I look forward to put some into practice myself. So thanks so much for being here and have an awesome rest of the day.

Esteban Gast
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. This was a ton of fun. Thank you.